GOP Debate Scores 14.5 Million Combined Viewers on CNN, Telemundo

The circus was in town Thursday night, and CNN/Telemundo sold a bunch of tickets.

The two GOP debate host networks combined for 14.521 million total viewers on Thursday. The cable news channel grabbed 91 percent of those overall eyeballs, 13.326 million viewers. That left 1.265 million for Telemundo.

In the key 25-54 demographic, 4.684 million viewers tuned in via linear TV. Of those, 4.058 million — about 87 percent — watched on CNN, while 626,000 checked out out via Telemundo.

Both the 14.5 million sum and the 4.7 million demo count mark the fifth-largest figures for a primary debate ever. Additionally, Thursday’s event was the biggest debate thus-far in calendar 2016 — the rightwing ones have been chronologically growing as we head towards Super Tuesday.

Last night’s debate also saw 10 million video starts and 2.1 million total live streams via the web, CNN app, Apple TV and Roku. Streaming engagement peaked at 10:05 p.m. ET with 708,000 concurrent streams.

The GOP event was live from Houston, Tex. and moderated by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Questioners included Dana Bash, Telemundo’s Maria Celeste Arraras and Salem Radio host Hugh Hewitt.

9 More Donald Trump Fudges and Lies From Primary Season (Videos)

Donald Trump seems to be on an unstoppable charge to the Republican presidential nomination, even though there's been a plethora of news reports challenging various claims he has made in the past two months alone. Here are some of his greatest hits.

During the CNN South Carolina town hall debate, Anderson Cooper asked Trump about a interview posted on Buzzfeed in which Trump voiced support of the Iraq invasion. Trump responded by saying that he opposed the Iraq invasion by the time it started, but Buzzfeed countered with a clip from another taken the weekend after the invasion started, in which he said the invasion looked like "a tremendous success."

On Jan. 29, Trump said that he "never once asked" for Fox News' Megyn Kelly to be removed as a moderator for a debate that he boycotted. While Trump didn't directly request the removal, he did question Kelly's qualifications. On Jan. 23, he tweeted: "Based on @MegynKelly's conflict of interest and bias she should not be allowed to be a moderator of the next debate."

During his New Hampshire victory speech, Trump claimed the unemployment rate of 5 percent was false, and was actually somewhere between 28-42 percent (fast forward to 12:00). While the unemployment rate most commonly reported does not count people who are not actively seeking jobs, there is another which includes more people attached to the labor force. Under this, the unemployment rate only rises to 10 percent.

Another claim from the N.H. victory speech is that Trump is the only candidate who self-funds his campaign. A check of documents from the Federal Election Commission shows that as of the end of 2015, Trump had put in nearly $2 million to his campaign, but he had received just over $6.5 million from donors.

During a Jan. 20 town hall in Iowa, Trump said that he could make Mexico pay for a border-spanning wall by using the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico to cover the cost. Politifact debunked it, citing several economic experts who noted that the trade deficit is based largely on private trading, and that Mexico's trade surplus does not mean that they have the resources to fund such a wall.

This attack ad against Ted Cruz that aired in South Carolina this past month is one of many examples of Trump claiming that illegal immigrants are "pouring in." The hyperbole ignores a 2015 Pew Research study that shows that the illegal immigrant population in America has actually declined by about 1 million since the start of the recession.

At a rally on Feb. 19, Trump claimed that General John Pershing captured 50 Muslim terrorists in the 1920s and executed them via firing squad with bullets dipped in pigs' blood. The truth is that while Pershing fought against Muslim swordsmen in the Philippines to stop the massacre of Christians, he only sprinkled them with pigs' blood -- which they considered to be unholy -- to strike fear. He never ordered such an execution.

Trump continues to insist that torture techniques like waterboarding work. He does this despite the fact that just two years ago, a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques made headlines when it called them "not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees."

In a Jan. 14 debate, Trump claimed that there were very few women and children among the Syrian refugees. Two surveys by the U.N. count the number of Syrian refugees in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the number of refugees that have crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. In both surveys, women and children make up approximately 50 percent of the total refugee count.

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In just the past two months, the GOP frontrunner has raised many red flags with fact checkers

Donald Trump seems to be on an unstoppable charge to the Republican presidential nomination, even though there's been a plethora of news reports challenging various claims he has made in the past two months alone. Here are some of his greatest hits.